1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to teaching machines and, more particularly, to a novel and highly-effective teaching machine that is especially adapted for the instruction of very young children and that cooperates successively with a multiplicity of instructional cards in such a manner as to function in a variety of modes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Among the advantages of teaching machines are that they normally interact directly and individually with each student, thereby effectively constituting each student as a class of one; their patience with students employing them is unlimited, regardless of the abilities of the students, so that each student can proceed at his own optimum pace, being neither held back by other members of a class nor subject to embarrassment when giving incorrect answers; instructional materials for a large number of users can be centrally prepared and carefully tested for accuracy and degree of difficulty; the cost of instruction using machines is often less than the cost of the same instruction by human teachers; and many students find instruction by machine an enjoyable and stimulating experience.
Because of the importance that machines have assumed and are increasingly assuming in teaching foreign languages and the like, a great deal of attention has been given to their improvement.
Various machines have been proposed that cooperate with a card having a magnetic stripe (sometimes called a magnetic card). Such a machine checks an answer to a question prerecorded on the card and posed by the card or machine with the correct answer prerecorded on the card. The machine then informs the student whether the answer given by the student is correct.
One such conventional machine cooperates with a card upon which a magnetic track is printed by a magnetic ink and a non-magnetic ink alternately along the length of the card in such a manner to encode answers to questions. Though the area thus printed can be reproduced to show a correct answer, other information, such as multiple choice questions, cannot be recorded on the track. Furthermore, before reproducing the card, the student can prematurely detect the correct answer, if he knows the code, by observing the luster of the surface on the area printed by the different inks.
Another conventional machine cooperates with a card which has a striped magnetic tape upon which a question and the student's answer are both continuously recorded. Such a machine requires a device for causing the machine to pause after reproducing each question, and manual operation by the student becomes complicated. Moreover, the style of the questions must be formalized if the answer signal is not recorded in accordance with a predetermined code.
All prior teaching machines have limited versatility and typically present questions and check answers in only one format, or in just a few formats each of which differs very little from the others.